My coffee-colored tap water went viral. I still don’t know what was in it.

On Friday, Sept. 9 – the 11th day of the water crisis in Jackson, Miss., and weeks into a citywide boil water notice – I went to brush my teeth. I was at my apartment in Belhaven, one of the oldest and wealthiest neighborhoods in the majority-Black capital city. With the day off work, I had planned to drive to a suburb of Jackson to wash my clothes, thinking the laundromats in town were still affected by the crisis. Getting ready to leave, I turned on my bathroom sink faucet; f